


Doing It For Arthur: "St. Petersburg"

by PlaidAdder



Series: Cabin Pressure Meta [6]
Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Gen, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-17
Updated: 2015-08-17
Packaged: 2018-04-15 06:00:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4595571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaidAdder/pseuds/PlaidAdder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur describes the resolution as “Douglas doing something clever,” but in fact it’s a team effort. Douglas is the one who figures out what’s happening and what to do about it. But everyone’s in at the kill, and there are all these little touches in it that show you that the team is doing this for Arthur.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doing It For Arthur: "St. Petersburg"

I love “Qikiqtarjuaq,” much as it vexes me. Also “Ottery St. Mary.” I have a great fondness for “Douz.” One cannot but be charmed by “Molokai.” And nearly all the other episodes are mostly or partially brilliant. (At the bottom of the heap for me are “Kuala Lampur,” “Cremona,” “Newcastle,” and “Paris.” I think the common denominator there is that they depend on gags or premises that are more overused and sitcommy, like men behaving like idiots around attractive women. That and the whole “Douglas steals the Tallisker” thing is clearly way more interesting to Finnemore than it is to me, and even the meta-jokes about crime fiction and Sherlock in “Paris” are not enough to make up for the fact that basically the whole plot is built around that stupid bottle of whiskey).

But “St. Petersburg” is my favorite. What’s more satisfying than outwitting an obnoxious millionaire who’s not only trying to screw his ex-wife but is really horrible to his admittedly dim but really quite lovely son, while taking advantage of an Act of Goose to kick poor little MJN Air while it’s down?

I would love to expatiate further, but time’s winged chariot is hurrying near, so let’s just do bullet points:

 *** The bird strike.**  I love the bird strike. What I love about it is that neither Douglas nor Martin suddenly and improbably becomes a hero. Instead, they deal with their life-threatening emergency quickly and competently while remaining completely in character. I also love the acting in that sequence. It calls for emotions that are really different from anything those characters have done so far, but both actors just get them exactly right. I also love the way that, under pressure, Douglas sort of takes care of Martin without snarking at him or patronizing him or getting into a pissing contest about who’s got supreme command, and the way just a little bit of actual support helps Martin get over his initial panic and do what he has to do. This is the kind of thing you can’t do in Season 1 and it really mines the affection that you’ve built up for the characters over time.

 *** Douglas’s Revenge.**  I don’t talk as much about Douglas as I do about Martin. But I am fascinated by the fact that he’s been sacked for stealing. I think it’s a really important part of his backstory which is rarely dealt with directly, but is always shaping his story arc. (For instance, it’s got to be the reason that Douglas doesn’t apply to Swiss Airways himself, and the reason that despite his experience the only pilot job available to him after MJN folds involves humping piles of newspaper out of the back of a plane.) But of course only the small-time thieves are ever really punished; the really big thieves, such as the people responsible for the 2008 global financial crisis, are Too Big To Jail. “St. Petersburg” gives Douglas a chance to hit back at someone who is a much bigger and bolder thief than he is, but will never be held accountable for it because he has a lot more money. This is why I love the final stratagem with the steering wheel. “What’s the matter, Gordon? Do you find you have…sticky fingers?” BOOM GOES THE DYNAMITE!

 *** Arthur.** This episode might just win for Best Use of Arthur. There are a lot of good Arthur episodes–he has an especial friend on the creative team, after all–but this one brings together all the typical Arthurnesses that we have come to know and love while also discovering some new aspects of Arthur that we didn’t know he had. For instance, Arthur’s concern for the goose, and his willingness to believe that the goose might have survived the collision, are Classic Arthur at its finest. We also get the return of Meta Privileges Arthur from “Fitton.” Quasi-meta joking about Douglas’s  _servus callidus_  role (the “clever slave” stock character from Roman comedy; I’ll probably do a separate post about that someday when I’m trying to put off a more unpleasant task) has been a thing since “Douz,” but Arthur’s total lack of concern over MJNAir’s apparent demise just takes it to a new level. As in “Fitton,” Arthur demonstrates that he is more in tune with the universe than any of the other characters, and has an intuitive grasp of its rules and limits and possibilities than any of the people around him. But most intriguing of all, of course, is Arthur’s relationship to his father.

This has actually been prepared in the episodes leading up to this, though I don’t know whether it was intentional. There is almost nothing in the world that can make Arthur unhappy. But Mr. Leeman from “Boston” and Mr. Birling in “Edinburgh” are both capable of doing it; and like Gordon, they are both overbearing rich old men who have absolutely no appreciation for Arthur’s good qualities and instead just treat him and his inadequacies with contempt. Douglas, Martin, and Carolyn all regularly score off Arthur’s stupidity. The reason I can stand this in “Cabin Pressure” whereas it got really old for me in, say, “Fawlty Towers,” is that they all also do really love Arthur and appreciate the fact that he brings positive energy into what could otherwise become a really nasty environment. Gordon does not love Arthur. To him, Arthur is just someone to be manipulated. He pretends to be touched by Arthur’s gift while he’s still trying to make nice, and once the gloves come off he rejects it with great cruelty and contempt. 

The mixture of panic, fear, and tragic anticipation that Gordon inspires in Arthur is both really funny and really poignant. Even Douglas and Martin, who are not the most sensitive blokes int he world, are immediately struck by how profoundly disabling the mere mention of Gordon is to Arthur. Douglas jokes about Martin having “broken him” by asking him to describe Gordon; but that is actually what happens: around or on the topic of Gordon, Arthur cannot be Arthur. He reverts to what one imagines the child Arthur was like:  a twitching bundle of nerves desperately afraid of cruelty and yet simultaneously desperately hoping that maybe if he does the right thing it will be different. I have said before that comedy comes out of pain; on this show, it’s usually Martin’s pain, but sometimes also Douglas’s or Carolyn’s. This is the first time it’s coming out of Arthur’s pain. His hyperventilating speeches around the problem of finding a present for Gordon are hilarious and yet, when you think about them, really painful. (I am thinking about them a bit more perhaps because of having just finished “[Prior Engagements](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3131240/chapters/6786584),” which is part of a Johnlock series in which John’s father is exactly the sort of asshole that Gordon is, but I digress.) He must know, dim as he is, that nothing he can give Gordon will ever make him love or even like him; and yet he can’t help trying. And this brings me to the next bullet point:

 *** The Team Doing It For Arthur.** This is what makes the resolution of this Gordon-steals-GERTI plot so much more satisfying for me than the resolution of “Zurich.” Douglas and Martin like Gordon when they first meet him. Even after they find out he’s Carolyn’s ex, neither of them hates him as much as Carolyn wants them to. They probably figure that with a divorce, there’s bad blood, she’s no creampuff herself, maybe there were atrocities on both sides. It’s not until they see how Arthur reacts that they start to wonder. And then after they see how Gordon humiliates Arthur over his present, they’re both just like, all right, fuck this guy.

Arthur describes the resolution as “Douglas doing something clever,” but in fact it’s a team effort. Douglas is the one who figures out what’s happening and what to do about it. But everyone’s in at the kill, and there are all these little touches in it that show you that the team is doing this  _for_  Arthur. Douglas’s plan, first of all, takes care of Arthur by keeping him out of it; since interacting with Gordon is obviously so painful to him, Arthur isn’t asked to do it again. The steering column trick is beautiful because it forces Gordon to share Arthur’s incompetence and the humiliation that comes with it (it’s established in the opening bit that getting frozen to metal things is a particularly clottish/Arthury thing to do; and here’s Gordon doing it). But the best part of the whole plan is how it punishes Gordon for rejecting Arthur’s gift; and I love it that they let Martin handle that bit. “I know it’s his, because it has his name on it. Have you decided you like it after all, Mr. Shappey?” Martin’s probably got the most sympathy for Arthur at this point; he’s been subjected to this kind of rejection and humiliation all his life, and I love the way Cumberbatch delivers this whole sequence. For once Martin isn’t the lame who doesn’t get it or can’t pull it off; he does it all beautifully and he relishes the schadenfreude but is also really angry. I love it all.


End file.
